


The Infection

by livloveel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, POV Third Person, Romance, Sherlock's Mind, Sherlock's Mind Palace, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livloveel/pseuds/livloveel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with a box. </p><p>A single item in a single box on a single shelf in a vast palace of thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Infection

**Author's Note:**

> After rewatching the series I am highly aware that my version of Sherlock's mind palace doesn't jive 100% with 'reality'. I hope you can forgive me and overlook this for the sake of the story.

It started with a box. 

A single item in a single box on a single shelf in a vast palace of thought.

It was placed haphazardly at first, with little thought or care to its importance. To its power.

There wasn't a lock or key.

There wasn't even much thought given as to where to place it. Which wing? Which room? Which shelf? Which box? He had no way of knowing how it fit into his method of categorisation. 

He considered not even keeping the thought at all and instead deleting it just as he deleted any other irrelevant thought to make way for something more important, something necessary, something logical and tangible. 

But he had a moment of, dare he say, weakness? More like curiosity, he likes to think. So he decided to keep the thought temporarily, for curiosity's sake, of course. 

 

\--------------------

 

Somehow, some way, the single thought in the single box started to multiply. It was joined by similar uncategorizable thoughts, curious and mysterious thoughts. 

It wasn't until the box was half full that he was able to put a name to them. Or, several names, but the one he found easiest was a word he was also not very fond of.  _Sentiment_. 

He shuddered and sneered at the very word. How dull. How humiliating. How  _human_. 

Usually. 

But this time it was paired with something else, something attractively mysterious, something which protected the thoughts from being deleted.

He couldn't quite pin it down. It was only a few thoughts. He had room for them. They were in a box, now half full. He could spare a box, he supposed. 

 

\--------------------

 

Then, one day, he found himself walking down the hall through his mind palace, opening one of the many doors, reaching his arm towards the third shelf and sliding down this box, opening the lid trepidatiously. He was not sure why he wanted access to this particular box, at this particular moment. He was not on a case, he was not experimenting, he was not deducing or organising his thoughts or doing any of the usual thought-remodelling. 

No, he couldn't quite explain it. But he nonetheless found his hands on the lid of the box, his fingertips at the edge, feeling the weight of the box and its smooth surface against the palm of his hand. 

Slowly, carefully, he used a single fingertip to raise the lid of the box, waiting until a small gap formed between the box itself and the lid.

He cocked his head to the side and forward, peering though the small gap, almost afraid that something was going to jump out at him if he allowed himself to open the lid any further. 

He felt a small gust of wind pass his finger and suddenly dropped the lid back on the box, sliding it back into its place on the shelf. He was no longer curious. No, that wasn't it. He was very curious. Very curious indeed. But that single gust of wind was too much for him.  _Sentiment_. He grimaced slightly. His hand was still on the box on the shelf. 

He took the box down again. He considered tipping the box upside down, letting the contents spill out and away, joining the current of other deleted thoughts as they passed through the corridors and out of the palace doors. 

When he returned his attention to his hands, ready to empty the contents, he found that he had, mysteriously, already placed the box back onto the shelf.  _Curious_. 

Perhaps now was the not quite the time for any more cleanup. He'd leave the box there. He'd leave it be. He had more important things to do.

 

\--------------------

 

During the years after The Fall, he had plenty of time to walk through his palace, adding here, deleting there, doing any necessary cleanup. He had forgotten about that box, or rather, he had tried to forget the box. It was a bit easier now to forget about it. Since his  _'_ death' he had no reason to add any thoughts to that particular box, which he was quite grateful for to say the least. And he was so busy making sure everything was working like a well-oiled machine that he left the box alone.

But now, he found himself returning to that room, to that shelf, to that box. He told himself he was merely rearranging and reworking the room to improve efficiency. He brought a single hand up to the box, but when he attempted to slide it forward, he found he could no longer do so with one hand.  _Curious_. 

He brought another hand to the box. It was a struggle, lifting the box from the shelf. It had grown so  _heavy_. But before he could slide the box fully from the shelf he was suddenly aware that the box was not alone. There were now other boxes on the shelf. Quite a few in fact.  _Where had these come from?_ He didn't remember putting them there, and he certainly didn't remember filling them.

He paused. Stood back from the shelf. And then he looked around the room, startled. There were dozens of new boxes around him. His eyes widened. Shock. Confusion. He brought his hand out to one of the new boxes. Completely full.  _Of what?_

He pulled out a small table and placed three new boxes on top of it. He would investigate. He would cull. He would remodel. Subtract. Divide. 

He lifted the lid of a box, a forceful gust of air emitting from the shallow container. Memories flashed before his eyes.

 

_Laughing outside a crime scene._

_"_ _Take my hand."_

 

He closed the box quickly. Opened another.

 

_The morning paper. Tea. Two mugs._

_"_ _You're unattached. Like me. Fine. Good."_

He closed this one as well. 

He didn't need to open the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. He could deduce what lied within. He picked up one of the boxes and felt the extreme weight of it in his hands. 

He hesitated. Pondered. He hadn't foreseen the possibility of such thoughts taking up so much space. Especially when the instigator of such thoughts had moved on with his own life, had moved out and was planning to marry the love of his life. 

No, this would not do. This would not do at all. 

He didn't hesitate any longer. He sighed and flipped the box upside down, the lid falling to the ground. 

 _Silence_  

Confused, Sherlock flipped the box back over and stared at the contents still within. They had not fallen out, they had not submitted to gravity, they had not joined the torrent of spring cleaning detritus.

Narrowing his eyes he set the container back on the table, its lid still on the floor. For a second he merely stared at the contents. He reached for one of the objects inside, the touch causing a jolt of electricity to spread through his body, rooting him on the spot.

 

 _One of many nights at Angelo's. Post-case. A glance. A smile. A single candle. Another glance._   _Another smile. A flutter in his stomach. A friendly touch he wishes, for a second, was more._

 

He removes his hand from the object as quickly as he can, his hand searing from the pain. Or maybe it wasn't pain at all. One might call it pleasure. But the pleasure is still painful.

In a rush of anger (pain? pleasure?) he throws the table across the room, the boxes flying off but the lids staying on, sealed, again with no lock or key. The contents remain intact. And during this entire process the remaining boxes on the remaining shelves have multiplied two-fold. There are now boxes on the floor all the way up to the ceiling, and he doesn't know how they got there. And the more he thinks, the more he feels, the more confusion and anger and pain and pleasure that runs through his mind, the more these boxes grow and multiply.

As he thinks about these memories inside these boxes his chest aches, only serving as fuel for the fire, and the boxes are starting to fill the remaining space in the jam-packed room and he barely escapes, shutting the door behind him.

He takes out a lock and key and places it on the door. He forces himself to forget. To try and stop the conflagration within. If he forgets this, it will all go away. He will replace it all with facts and figures, and if that won't do he'll replace it with emptiness.

 

\--------------------

 

When he comes back to 'life' he worries that the re-emergence of John in his life might cause some serious damage to his mind palace. He takes steps to avoid this. He accepts Mary in John's life. He focuses on the cases at hand. He prepares for John to leave him, to go to his wife, to start a different life.

And he dares not touch that lock, that key, that door. The contents will be forever locked within. He fears it might all flood out if he tries to open the door and dispose of its contents. Instead, he is content with the knowledge that everything is where it should be. That he is safe. From sentiment. From John.

He continues to fill up the rest of his palace with more ideas, more facts and figures, more important and necessary knowledge from a stream of new cases. Every once in awhile he clears this room or that, but he never touches  _that_ one. He glances at it every now and then. Sometimes he has the impulse to access a certain memory but he rejects this impulse. Stuffs it away. Ignores the light ache in his chest. Deletes it away.

 

\--------------------

 

And then one day, as he strides down the corridors, feeling safe and confident in the confines of his mind, he is suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. Something is  _different._ No. Something is  _wrong_. Something is  _very, very wrong_.

He looks around him, up and down the hallways, up at the ceiling and down at the floor. He can feel light gusts of wind seeping out of every crack. The whole palace is shifting, sighing, groaning. Ever so lightly. Everything is still structurally intact, but he can hear things behind the walls. He can feel it coming up from underneath the floor. He can see it coming through the minuscule cracks in the ceiling. 

He puts his head to the walls.

 

_"I find it difficult. I find it difficult this sort of stuff."_

_His laugh._

_"You're my best friend."_

 

His eyes widen. He doesn't know what to do. He runs to that door. It is still locked. But something is wrong. He sinks his body to the floor, listening to the foundations of his mind.

 

_Sweaters._

_A touch. Affection._

_His happiness. At his wedding._

_"Don't get involved."_

 

Involved? He wasn't involved. He thought he'd thrown away those memories. Deleted them. He never stored them in the first place. He didn't have room, he didn't have the time, he didn't have the strength. 

But he was wrong. The walls were groaning with the weight of the memories. They were behind each closed door, co-habitating with his other thoughts. His facts were being influenced by complete  _fiction_. By something that was not. Something that will never be. Something that would never happen, even if he allowed it to, even if he wanted to. Which he didn't. But then why could he not control this? How had it gotten so out of hand? His palace was... _infected_.

He ran to the nearest door. He knew what logic was stored there. But when he opened the door, all he saw was  _John_. Or his thoughts, his memories, everything... _touched_  by him. Every single box, every single shelf, was oozing memories and images of John, and it was all Sherlock could do but stand in the centre of it all, astounded, confused, angry and hurt. 

He shook himself. No.  _No._ He still had control of his mind. He could still wander within, organise this piece of information, toss away that, add this. It wasn't a lost cause.

Nevertheless, the infection had spread. It wasn't malignant, per se. But it was frightening. It was consuming him. It was dripping down the walls, raining onto his face, fueling a fire of hope and dread. 

And the infection did not stop in his mind. It spread downwards, infiltrating the rest of his body and exploding towards his chest, making its final home in his heart. A delightfully painful parasite and he was its host. 

And for now, all he could do was accept it. He had no other choice. Everything was still functioning, but there was another layer there, something he could not get rid of without having it all crumble away. John had penetrated every nook and cranny and had become his foundation, his  _everything_. Impossible to eradicate without causing serious damage to his entire being. 

And so he let it be. There was nothing he could do. He learned to live with the infection and the pain that came from all of those memories. All of those feelings he was forced to access even when all he wanted to do was sit down to a good experiment, solve a simple case, think about a simple problem of mathematics. 

And it hurt, god did it hurt. Because all they were were memories. And while they were once real, they are now fiction. John is still there, and they are still friends and colleagues and ex-flatmates. And that's how it will always be. 

So the infection keeps spreading. And Sherlock continues on living, on deducing, on solving this crime and that, sometimes with John and sometimes without him. At least physically. Because John is always with him. John, his virus.

A virus that feels so good and yet so very bad. A virus that is so painful to live with, but which he can not live without.

 

\--------------------

 

And suddenly, one day, Sherlock is excited to enter the palace doors. 

He prepares himself, stands in front of the intimidating but welcoming structure, a hand on each door, and opens them wide. 

He looks around the rooms, bathing in the ecstasy that now falls upon him. The halls are brighter, the sun is shining through the windows, curtains flowing in the breeze.

He can hear his footsteps against the tile, feels the light texture of the walls with his hands, and the cracks in the ceiling have been mended. 

He closes his eyes and breathes it all in. And suddenly, he is running down the halls, opening each of the doors, letting the sunlight in and the contents breathe some fresh air. He runs and runs until he gets to that wing, that hall, that door.

He takes out the key and opens the lock and the door bursts open, a gleam of light and a feeling of pleasure washing over him, brightness flooding the palace and he can feel his face smiling in delight.

The memories are still there. They have multiplied, magnified, intensified. He can feel them with every step he takes. Their warmth, their protection, their support.

But no matter how welcome he feels here, he no longer feels the need to stay here. This is his palace, but not his home. His home is with  _him_.

And as he makes his way back down the corridor he feels as light as a feather. He exits the palace, his hands on the doorknobs, his eyes raking in the sunlight within the palace for a few more seconds. 

And the memory that radiates through every wall, every room and every corridor is no longer the result of a virus. It is his salvation.

 

 _"Sherlock, I love you."_            

**Author's Note:**

> Hi lovelies,
> 
> I hope you enjoy. I wrote this while listening to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dfa65ULK3U), from the gorgeous film 'Ink' on loop (I had originally heard it on a Johnlock fanvid).
> 
> And your comments are my lifeblood.
> 
> Hope you'll follow me on [Tumblr](http://cupidford.tumblr.com/) \- new artwork/fics/etc added every day!


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